


(Never One of) The Marrying Kind

by frnklymrshnkly



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Brawling, Carousing, Confused Emotions, Covens, F/F, Footnotes, Friendly Insults, Getting Together, Headology, Home Improvement, Original Female Characters - Freeform, Personal Revelations, Ramptops wedding traditions, Ramtops life, Witches, backseat flying, canon-type singleness/celibacy shaming between Nanny and Granny, canon-type slut shaming between Granny and Nanny, capers, comradery, dodgy locales, dubious tonics, emotional cluelessness, heartology, makeshift witchcraft, potent facial expressions, pre-pre-drinking, quaffing, self-actualisation, smartening up, tangents, thatch - Freeform, tippling, unlimited omniscient POV, wedding farce
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 19:24:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16165355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frnklymrshnkly/pseuds/frnklymrshnkly
Summary: A wedding(?), a caper, and a few revelations.





	1. ACT I: A Wedding(?)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [onedogtown](https://archiveofourown.org/users/onedogtown/gifts).



> This is my first discworld fic and I confess I have not read the whole (massive) series. But _Wyrd Sisters_ is my fave (so far!), so I have endeavoured to set this story in the year or so following the events of that book. It should definitely not be assumed to be canon compliant with anything after that.
> 
> Dear onedogtown, when I offered this pairing, I had a sneaking suspicion it was going to be the one I ended up writing. I’m practically a soothsayer (don’t tell Granny)! I love the quote you gave me for inspiration: “And Granny really couldn't be having at all with Nanny Ogg, who was her best friend." You said it captures what you like about Granny and Nanny’s dynamic, so I hope that I kept true to it here. I certainly tried. You also wrote “any take on these two, and I'm there.” I really hope you meant that, because this went pretty off the rails. I can only apologise and pray that it brings you a smile or two. <3
> 
> Huge thank you to **TDCat** for going above and beyond the call of duty to beta this one, and to my rl partner for helping me plot. And, of course, giant thanks to the mods for organising this massive, wonderful fest! It was a pleasure to participate for the first time and to have the challenge of writing in a new fandom.

Somewhere in the multiverse, speeding through space on the back of four elephants balanced on the back of the World Turtle, Great A’tuin, there spins a discworld. The presence of the discworld is a simple fact, as constant and dependable as Death or the reek of the river Ankh.[1]

And on the discworld, there is a mountain range known as the Ramtops, where the inhabitants’ adherence to local traditions is nearly (though not quite) as constant and dependable as Death or the reek of the River Ankh. But this is not for any lack of trying on the part of Esme Weatherwax, or, as most of her neighbours know her, Granny.

Granny Weatherwax is a firm believer in tradition. Well, to be more precise, Granny Weatherwax just doesn’t hold with anything _modern_. And the latter encompasses the former. Except when it doesn’t. But the core of the matter is that the way Granny had been brought up doing things is just fine, if you please. And who the disc were these youths, with their newfangled ideas, to disagree?

Granny’s position on modernity leaves her in something of an internal lurch today, because it is doing heady battle with her nearly equally unflappable disdain for weddings. Certainly, matrimony—indeed, positively ruckus nuptials—have been a feature of life in the Ramtops since the mountain range was settled.[2] The problem for Granny is that wedding tradition, at least in the Ramtops, dictates that 1) everyone down to the officiant get roaring drunk; 2) the bride be ritually humiliated by the vulgar public removal of her unmentionables (then cast into a crowd of drunken, frothing _lads_ ); 3) the mothers of the bride and groom spend the occasion locked in a cold war of passive aggression; and 4) the outbreak of at least three brawls (resulting in a minimum of five bloodied noses (it wasn’t a Ramtops wedding without the groomsmen tucking socks filled with farthings away somewhere on their persons for when the festivities _really_ got going)).

And if there’s one thing that Granny Weatherwax doesn’t hold with above all else, it is tomfoolery. And she knows from experience Ramptop weddings have more tomfoolery that she can shake a stick at. In her younger years her stick-waving arm used to cramp up something awful, and she’d end up fighting off men—not suitors, mind, just forward thinkers set on giving themselves the advantage of a weapon in the upcoming scrimmages.

And then, on top of all that, there are the issues of dress. In the first place, there’s the social obligation not to wear black because of its macabre association with death. Granny steadfastly ignores this convention, as she owns no clothing in any other colour. People have a tendency to point it out though, and while she’s happy to subdue such noise merchants with her most withering glares, she doesn’t hold with anyone, under any circumstances, asking a witch to take her hat off. And people always do, during the ceremony. HA! Any witch worth her salt doesn’t part company with her hat except perhaps to sleep. Her observance of this rule with absolute sacrosanctity effectively makes Granny the only _real_ witch she knows. 

And so, torn between her insistence that the way she’s always done things is the way they ought to be done (thank you very much), her base detestation of ballyhoo of any description, and the headache she gets from turning withering frowns upon those fool enough to bring up her headwear, Granny is feeling more than a little tetchy when Magrat Garlick arrives on her doorstep. Magrat’s brow is shiny from her walk from Mad Stoat in the summer heat, and her longed-for Good Hair Day is still evading her. That hasn’t stopped her from adorning her hair, of course. The dried flowers she’s stuck in it look like some watercolour struggle between petals and a raspberry bush in which the bush has come out the definitive winner.

“What’ve you got to smile about?” Granny demands, eyeing Magrat’s hair with disdain.

Magrat, used to Granny’s way with words, and herself recently self-actualised enough to rise above them, keeps on smiling. “It’s an auspicious day,” she replies, crossing Granny’s lintel without an invitation.

Granny snorts, letting her pass. “Oh, it is, is it? Says who?”

“Says me. Are you ready?” Magrat asks, giving Granny a look that suggests that the answer should be: “No, not yet, let me just go change.”

“Course I’m ready.”

“We talked about this, Granny.”

“About what?” asks Granny, knowing precisely what, but digging her heels in, stubborn as a mule.

“About wearing black today,” Magrat says with genuine patience and no small amount of superior understanding. “It’s really not the done thing for—"

“I’m a witch,” Granny counters. “Witches wear black. It’s what people expect witches to wear. Black, and a nice, pointed hat. I could never be holding with all those patterns and flowers and similar.”

“Perhaps,” says Magrat, as though she seriously doubts it. Magrat, with her own preference for colourful patterns, flowing skirts, scarves, shawls, bangles, and flowers, has never seen eye to eye with Granny on exactly what a witch should look like. “But it _is_ a wedding, you know? A happy occasion. A new beginning—"

“Hooey,” says Granny. “New beginning indeed... New baby on the way and a new crossbow in Gytha’s hand aimed at the groom to match, more like.”

“—A celebration of love,” Magrat continues over Granny’s remonstrances. 

“Love?” Granny scoffs. Sometimes Magrat’s ideas really snatch the biscuit. “You’ve been reading too many of them books, Magrat. Marrying folk do it because they get up the duff or they can’t stand living with their parents another minute, simple as that.” Granny’s tone makes it clear that she should not under any circumstances be counted among the number of “marrying folk.”

“Shall we go?” Magrat refuses to dignify Granny’s rant with a response. It’s a tactic she’s developing—a tool in her self-improvement kit—thanks to Bony Swallow’s book, Ignoring Others, Meeting Yourself. Bony says you can’t change others. And, considering her primary companions—Granny, of course, and Nanny Ogg—Magrat’s experience has taught her the truth in that. She knows there’s no point in trying to get Granny to change into anything more festive either. Even if Granny weren’t an immovable object where… well, everything, really, is concerned, the wedding is set to begin soon, and they’ll need all the time they have to walk from Bad Ass to Lancre Town and then escort Nanny to the wedding hall.

* * *

Granny has been a woman of a solid gait and a quick step as long as she’s been walking, and her walking companions have been shutting up and keeping up just as long. Thus, they arrive on the spick-and-span back stoop of Tir Nani Ogg and knock on the highly polished door in remarkably little time. Magrat, whose frizzy hair seems to be increasing with volume commensurately with the number of steps she takes, mops her brow with the scarf tied around her waist as Granny taps her foot impatiently. A cacophony sounds from behind the door. Soon (though not soon enough for Granny) it is pulled open.

“Where’s your mother,” Granny asks abruptly.

“Hiya, Shawn,” Magrat offers. Manners cost nothing.

“She’s inside, go on through. I should be there already! And so should the rest of you!” Shawn calls over his shoulder to his countless siblings, nieces, and nephews. He gestures them both inside as he dashes down the garden path, past Nanny’s many obscene decorative gnomes, and around to the front of the house. Inside, Nanny’s children and grandchildren race past Granny and Magrat, adjusting the collars of their finest shirts and patting their hair and buttoning their coats as they follow in Shawn’s wake.

In a rocking chair near a flameless hearth (it’s too hot for a fire during wedding season) with cheeks as rosy as if there had in fact been a crackling flame in the grate, is Nanny Ogg.

“You’re fox-drunk already, Gytha,” Granny admonishes.

“Nothing wrong with a bit of a tipple,” Nanny deflects with a hiccup. “Not every day your daughter gets—" HIC! “—wed.”

“For _you_ it is,” Granny retorts. Nanny’s prolific-ness is one of Granny’s favourite topics on which to comment under her breath. Or, indeed, above it. Perhaps it’s her own lack of children, but Granny has always demonstrated a great degree of thinly concealed interest where Nanny’s boudoir activities are concerned. 

Magrat grabs a chair from around the table and drags it next to Nanny’s. “Are you ready to go, Nanny?” Nanny, being always ready for another drink or another verse of the Hedgehog Song (or both), is correspondingly never ready to go. Which is why Granny, who’s known Nanny her whole life, and is therefore more familiar with her penchant for a drink than practically anyone, and who’d also recalled that Nanny had nearly missed Niall’s wedding last year after taking a tumble on her way, had appointed herself and Magrat Nanny’s official handlers. She just can’t be holding with a witch going about embarrassing herself in public.[3] Magrat, who has always got on as well with Nanny as everyone else does, was happy to oblige. 

HIC! “Yes, yes,” Nanny affirms. “But won’t you have a drink first?” Nanny offers.

“No.” Granny says.

“Alcohol is ruinous to the liver and the mind alike.” Magrat says sagely. She doesn’t need Granny’s approval (according to Bony Swallow), but Magrat does respect her, and enjoys these rare moments when they find themselves in agreement.

“Our Morag’s marrying a roofer, did you know?” Nanny says, holding up a glass in a toast to his profession, before tipping a generous measure of ale into her gaping mouth. “Not a moment too soon, either. The roof here needs redoing… Winter’s only a few months away!” 

“To Morag!” Magrat enthuses.

“To my new—” HIC! “—roof!” Nanny toasts.

“To the hall, both of you,” Granny appends with a shooing gesture.

* * *

After a couple of stalled attempts to get out of her rocking chair, Magrat and Granny hoist Nanny up by the armpits with an “On three! One, two…” Nanny insisting all the while that she’s as nubile as ever and game for anything. On any other day, Nanny would be right. She’s no stranger to “a bit of a tipple,” as she calls it, and can drink any wagon driver passing through Lancre under the table at The Goat and Bush, but today is not any other day. Today one of her children is getting wed, which means her brood of indentured servants is growing—definitely cause for excessive celebrations (that is, pre-pre-drinking).

The walk to the hall is not long, Lancre Town being about as large as a moderately sized church yard, but it is still a slow affair. Granny’s got one arm around Nanny’s ample waist to keep her upright, while Magrat has one of her arms linked through Nanny’s like a gentleman to steady her. They might be making better time if Nanny weren’t continuously unlinking her arm from Magrat’s and elbowing Granny with her gesticulations—themselves only the punctuations to her excited tangent about the incredible things they can do with shingles these days, and how superb a new set will look on the top of her townhouse.

Magrat coos, “Won’t that look nice.”

“What’s wrong with thatch?” Granny wants to know.

HIC! “Practically a powder—” HIC! “—keg, Esme!” Nanny exclaims.

“She’s right, you know,” Magrat agrees. “Remember Felmet? Had had his men out torching cottages left right and centre. Thatch goes up like an Anhkian candle!”

“Pfft.” Granny dismisses. “Wood shingles fireproof, are they?”

“Maybe not,” says Nanny, “but if the house is going to burn to a—” HIC! “—crisp, I say it may as well look good while it—” HIC! “—gets on with it.”

Magrat chuckles. Granny abstains, though not without effort. Nanny might be as drunk as a wheelbarrow, but she’ll never be drunk enough to miss the infinitesimal way that Esme’s eye twitches when she’s trying to stifle a laugh. Nanny _knows_ Esme Weatherwax; Esme thinks that if she starves out Nanny’s “un-witchly behaviour,” that Nanny might just give it up as a bad job. Fat chance.

“There’s nothing wrong with the thatch you’ve got now, anyway,” Granny begins. “It’s got a nice moss coming on.”

Moss indeed! Nanny can’t be holding with the kinds of slovenly ways that Esme holds as proper for a witch. Clean and prim, that’s how Nanny likes things (though a bit of a laugh doesn’t go amiss, neither). 

“And that’s exactly why—” Nanny begins. She is interrupted, however, by Neville Ogg running towards them, waving his arms and hollering something they can’t make out.

“It’s our—” HIC! “—Nev!” Nanny announces. They keep walking, and Nev closes in on them, screeching to a halt a few paces before the witches and bending over, hands on his thighs, to catch his breath.

“What is it, lad?” Nanny asks.

Nev tilts his head up to look at them. “It’s—" GASP “it’s—" GASP “it’s—" Nev tries through panting inhalations, waving his arm behind him in the vague direction from which he’s come.

“It’s—" GASP.

“It’s what, boy?! Spit it out!” Granny instructs.

“It’s our Morag!” He finally manages—it’s nigh impossible for anyone under thirty not to obey a command from Granny Weatherwax as a matter of reflex. “We don’t know where she is!”

 

[1] Unlike most vile odours to which those in close proximity become accustomed, the stench of the river Ankh is not only noted by the local Morporkians, but celebrated with axioms such as “You’ll never get sick from an Ankh fish!” Largely, this is the case because no fish could survive therein.

[2] This was accomplished by a community that had almost certainly been looking for greener pastures (or any pastures that weren’t icy, really) but had decided after one ascent too many that “This is fine.”

[3] A sentiment that leads to a great deal of disapproving face pulling on Granny’s part any time anyone tells a story about Nanny’s latest trip round the pub.


	2. ACT II: A Caper

The news of her daughter’s disappearance has a sobering effect on Nanny, which, by extension, puts her in a right state. Suddenly she looks hardly any drunker than usual, which is to say, stumblingly tipsy rather than three sheets to the wind. Before they can react, Nanny messily wrests herself free of Granny and Magrat’s clutching arms and redoubles her pace in the direction of the wedding hall.[4]

After gleaning what they could from Nev (no, they hadn’t seen our Morag since she left Ti Nani Ogg that morning; no, she didn’t tell anyone where she was going; and no, no dodgy types had been spotted round Lancre Town in the last days) Nanny seems to draw upon the inherent magic of the Ramptops to carry her, stable and straight, to the hall at double time.

“Our Morag better smarten up her ideas by the time I get there,” she opines, “or I’m going to be out of a roof, and she’ll be out on her arse, or I’m a—”

“Teetotaling maiden,” Granny offers.

“Don’t worry Nanny, I’m sure it’s nothing,” Magrat calls placatingly as she trots to catch her up. Granny, who doesn’t hold with trotting (undignified!), lengthens her strides. “Unless,” Magrat continues, winded, “you don’t think she might have been snatched, do you?”

“Snatched!” Nanny cries, aghast. “Who’d do a thing like that?!” 

“Don’t know,” says Magrat, with a voice that would be more at home around a campfire on a dark night than a high street on a sunny day. “A spurned suitor? We can enchant a map and sword for Garrick, and he can use the map to guide him to Morag and the sword to fight for her honour and—"

Granny speaks over Magrat’s increasingly fevered suggestions. “I wouldn’t worry yourself, Gytha. She’s probably just trying to be, wossname,” Granny suddenly looks deeply affronted, “fashionably late.”

“Do you think so?” Magrat asks, suddenly dreamy at the thought.

“Bunch of modern nonsense’s what it is,” Granny complains disdainfully. “Used to be the groom crashed through the bride’s door and fought off her father and brothers with a stick, paraded her about town over his shoulder for a bit, and the deal was sealed.”

“That’s awful!” shrieks Magrat, who’s dreamy look is replaced as quickly as it had arrived by one of a positively Granny-esque level of censure.

“I remember when our Rufus scooped me up… I was hanging linens in the garden, I was, and suddenly I was being carted down the way with a sheet still in my hand, trailing along.” Nanny halts her steps for a moment, lost in fond recollection. 

“It was a sight, alright,” Granny says drily. “You were at least twice his size.” 

“Aye, I’ve always been a healthy size,” Nanny agrees. 

Granny can’t disagree with that. As long as she’s known Gytha, she’s been plump and buxom, red cheeked and (assuming none of her daughters-in-law hasn’t shirked her chores) merry. It’s not a bad way of being, Granny’s often supposed, though she’d never give Gytha the satisfaction of saying it out loud. To be amiable, quick to laugh, busty… There’s no denying that Gytha’s manner has gotten them through a scrape or two. But it just ain’t right for a witch. Let weavers and tradesmen’s wives and goat herders frequent the taverns singing about hedgehogs and similar. A witch should be more… well, more like Granny. If only she could induce a few warts to sprout on her face, Granny thinks pridefully, she’d fit her own description of a witch to a T.

“Maybe she’s got jitters.” Magrat starts a new tact of speculation. “Some of the girls around Mad Stoat say that can happen when the day arrives… What are jitters?” she adds, curious.

“Jitters my foot,” Granny grumbles. “Morning sickness, more like.”

“Jitters!” Nanny cries defiantly at the same time. “What’s our Morag got to be jittery about? About to wed a dashing young man with reliable trade, she is!”

“There there, Gytha,” Granny pats Nanny’s shoulder brusquely. “Your army of sprogs will be looking high and low—they’ll find her right enough. You mark my words, by the time we get there she’ll be halfway down the aisle.”

“For the sake of my roof,” Nanny says, “she better be.”

* * *

Nanny is not happy to find, upon their arrival at the hall, that her roof is figuratively, as well as literally, up in the air. Morag is nowhere in sight. The guests, for their part, are milling around drinking, falling over each other, singing the odd ballad, concerned only with when the first punch-up will commence.

“Oooh where is that girl?!” Nanny exclaims. It’s not her usual temperament; it’s one that Granny has seen over the years, generally following one of her choicest insults, or else when one of the nameless wives of Gytha’s brood has forgotten to put stewed prunes out with her morning gruel or to give Greebo his decennial bath.

Magrat, on the other hand, has never yet encountered Nanny Ogg in high dudgeon. Sure, she’s seen Nanny return Granny’s lippy slights often enough, but that feels almost fond in its way. Magrat doesn’t mind playing peacekeeper to her mentors—putting a kettle on or rummaging up some scones with bats on, or even just a well-timed subject change. Magrat finds that mentioning any her “newfangled notions” about witchcraft or, more recently, Bony Swallow’s tenets for an empowered life, is a surefire way to redirect any conversation. Granny, of course, dismisses anything modern as a matter of course, and Nanny, though far more tolerant, still doesn’t take kindly to burning “whiffy incense” or putting her prized tchotchkes out round the back on the full moon for a lunar bath or declaring one’s intentions in the mirror with purpose.

This, though, is a whole other cauldron of potion. Nanny is genuinely cross.

“Morag!” Nanny calls. It’s fruitless though, because the guests are wagging their chins and guffawing and crooning so loudly that fairly nothing can be heard over the din.

“Pointless, Gytha,” Granny advises. “She’ll never hear you in here. We’ll have to find her.”

“I could do a spell—” Magrat begins, pulling at some of the dried flowers adorning her hair hopefully.

“Who needs magic to find a bride at a wedding?” Granny asks sarcastically. “Just need headology—it’s only a matter of spotting a woman in white trying to stay inconspicuous.”

* * *

As it turns out, Granny is wrong. In the ceremonial hall alone they find no fewer than six women in white.[5] Each one in turn is grabbed from behind and swiveled around by Nanny, or else shouted at from across the room. Finally, their search leads them outside to the privy, where Nanny spots a bit of white fabric under the door. It turns out, however, to be the officiant, who screams blue murder as he’s hauled bodily out of the loo by a furious Nanny Ogg ranting about how “she’d better have an almighty case of the trots if she’s out here in the privy when there’s a roofer to wed?!” 

Magrat apologises to the officiant while Nanny assures him it’s nothing she hasn’t seen before and Granny appends that _that’s_ an understatement.

Despite getting in a jibe, Granny’s spirits drop. Perhaps the girl really is missing. Hardly what you’d call normal around here. Most girls of the marrying kind are positively sprinting down the aisle, eager as beavers to get all their _trysting_ on the up and up.

“She’s not here,” Magrat says for the tenth or eleventh time. 

“There’s news.” Nanny’s cheeks are burning red, and for once, it’s not from the pleasant roar of a fire or the quaffing of ale.

“She’s definitely not in the building,” Granny asserts. “We’d have found her by now.” 

“Well, that’s obvious,” Nanny complains. “But what’re we going to do about it?”

“Easy,” Granny says. “Magrat says she can do a spell.”

* * *

“Oh, if only I had my scrying bowl,” Magrat laments as she, Granny, Nanny, and the officiant, still muttering affrontedly, reenter the main building. “We could go back to my cottage, of course—"

“Don’t need none of that—” Granny interrupts.

“Just need headology. I know, I know…” It’s not that Magrat hasn’t been putting more and more store in the efficaciousness of headology since forming a coven with Granny and Nanny. It’s just that her scrying bowl is so lovely—it had been a gift from Goody Wimper (may she rest in peace)—and she rarely gets to apply it to a real emergency…

“Is the wedding going ahead then?” The officiant asks, testily. And it’s hard to know whether he’s more annoyed about being caught in a squat or because it’s practically his secondary duty as officiant to get drunker than any of the guests and sick up on one of the members of the wedding band. But he does have to be at least sober enough to pronounce the couple wed first, which means he can’t yet join in the revelry in earnest.

“Where can we have a bit of privacy?” Granny asks him without preamble.

“Well, there’s not much in the way of privacy. Aside from the main hall with the guests and my office, there’s really only the privy.” His tone suggests that they are more welcome back in the thunder box, than in his office.

“Your office will do just fine,” Nanny informs him. 

“Of course, I want Morag found as much as anyone. But my private chambers…” 

“Are where, exactly?” Granny asks.

Under the combined weight of Granny’s glower, Nanny’s unusual grimness, and his own desire to toss back a few (more) ales, the officiant leads them to his office, unlocks it, and proceeds to lean on the wall as though preparing to watch a spectacle take place.

“Good lad,” Granny says, as she shoves him out the door by the shoulders and slams it in his protesting face.

Nanny’s not sitting idly by, though. She grabs a nearby vase of cut flowers off his desk, yanks them out by the stems and tosses them over her shoulder without ceremony, and hands the vase filled with browning water to Magrat.

“Here you are,” Nanny says, by way of invitation.

“It’s all filled with petals and leaves,” Magrat points out, a little anguished, as she begins pulling her fingers through the water like a sieve, catching small handfuls of floral debris and dropping them into the officiant’s bin. 

“Thought you went in for all that. Natural stuff, and similar.” Granny sniffs.

“I like plants fresh or dried, not sodden and mouldering.” 

“Hurry up, girl!” Nanny implores. “Who knows how long the groom’ll be willing to hang about.”

“As long as there’s ale to be quaffed, I reckon,” Granny asserts.

Nanny winces, physically pained by the injustice that she’s spending her own daughter’s would-be wedding day working makeshift charms in a officiant’s office instead of quaffing ale cheerfully with her guests. Remembering her flask, she extracts it from her knickers and takes a sip as Magrat pronounces the water and vase fit to use.

It’s not a difficult bit of magic, and it’s one Nanny is particularly familiar with (“Scrying ain’t spying!” she’s often assured Granny after being accused of being a lookie-loo), yet Nanny lets Magrat get the magic going. The girl does so enjoy these kinds of things, after all, and there’s no reason not to indulge her whimsy if the result will be the same and no slower.

Magrat places the vase on the officiant’s desk and hunches over it. “Could you douse the lights?” she asks. “It’d be best on the night of a full moon, of course.”

“Get on with it, Magrat.” Magrat does, but she refuses to give up her way entirely. Unnecessarily, in Granny’s and Nanny’s opinions, she presses her hands together in front of her and then moves them apart, sweeping them out to her sides in an affected gesture.

“Showy,” Nanny chuckles to Granny out of the corner out of her mouth in a stage whisper—unconcerned about Magrat hearing and breaking her concentration.

“Don’t need none of that, girl,” Granny agrees with no pretense. “Just tell it what you want to see, like a bloody witch, and it’ll show you.”

“Sure enough.” Nanny nods.

It’s been an interesting shift between Nanny and Granny, having Magrat around to educate. Of course, Magrat, already trained up by Goody Wimper (may she rest in peace) and herself a fully fledged witch, thank you, had made no request to receive any such education. And yet, though Nanny, with her friendly nature, is generally less hostile to some of Magrat’s “newfangled notions” than Granny, whose tendency is to dismiss them outright, the two older witches certainly feel entitled to share their views with Magrat—often, in superior tones, and with detail.

Not long ago, perhaps, Magrat would have sighed and shrugged and given the vase a plainly worded command. But she’s self-actualised now, and she knows her way will work—is working, in fact. Colours begin to swirl over the top of the water, where moments before the reflection of the ambient light from the windows and the officiant’s oil lamps had shone. 

“No sense of forthrightness—” Granny begins, turning to Nanny, but Magrat quickly shushes her.

“It’s working,” Magrat informs them. Nanny and Granny rush forward.

“What is it? Where is she?” Nanny demands.

“I can’t tell yet,” Magrat says. “It’s not done the swirly bit.”

Colours mingle together, dancing across the top of the water as Nanny bounces up and down on the balls of her feet, antsy.

The swirling begins to slow, and firmer images begin to form—though the motion of them never quite stops. Nanny all but hip checks Magrat aside, which might have been more efficacious if Granny, who is definitely _not_ as nosy as Nanny (but _does_ , as the first among equals here, feel the need to be kept abreast of the situation), elbows Magrat from the other side. The effect is to keep them all in their places, albeit more tightly packed together.

“There she is! Is that the Apothecary?” Magrat asks, though she already knows it is. She’s the foremost herbalist in the coven—in Lancre, really—and she frequents the place for dried herbs when certain ingredients are out of season, or else for imported items she can’t get locally. Old Dirk’s a nice enough bloke—always has a discount for a witch (“As he ought to,” Granny reminds Magrat, whenever she expresses thanks for Old Dirk’s generous nature).

“It never was!” Nanny exclaims. “What business has she got there now?” 

“It is,” Magrat says with certainty. “I can see his shelf behind him.”

“And I’d recognise that balding head of his any day of the week,” Granny adds.

“What’s she doing there at a time like this?” Nanny demands, as though her cohorts will have answers.

“What’s she saying?” Granny inquires.

“Can’t get sound from a flower vase, Granny,” Magrat says flatly (not that Nanny or Granny can get sound out of their purpose-built scrying tools either).

Nanny doesn’t seem to care, though. In fact, she’s not even looking into the vase any longer. On the contrary, she’s marching over to the door, rearranging her bodice with purpose and stepping over the cast-aside flowers as she goes. 

Barely missing a beat, Granny follows after her, quickly catching up with her longer strides.

“Where are we going?” Magrat calls as she chases after them.

* * *

Fortunately, Old Dirk’s Apothecary is in the capital, and as the capital’s high street is also its only street, they don’t have far to go.

“That girl’s going to have a thick ear when I’m through with her,” Nanny informs Magrat and Granny as they walk down the main drag toward the shop.

“Oh Nanny, I’m sure there’s a good reason—”

“Good reason, eh?” Granny counters skeptically. Granny might have her own ideas about getting wed, but once the hall is full and the groom is waiting, as far as she’s concerned, it’s just common courtesy for the bride to show up. Young people these days! No respect—not even for each other.

The rest of the short walk is completed in silence. Finally, Nanny gives Old Dirk’s door a sharp thwack with a meaty palm, and it flies open.

“Wotcher, Dirk. Where’s our Morag then?”

“Morag?” Dirk repeats in a terribly transparent attempt to play dumb.

“We know she were here, Dirk,” Granny tells him. “No point pretending she weren’t.”

“None at all,” Nanny chimes in.

“She’s due to get wed, you see, Dirk” Magrat tries to explain. “About an hour ago.”

“Ah, well, yes. You see, she was here. But as you can see she’s gone. You’ve missed her.” Old Dirk says these words hopefully, as though once pronounced, the witches would have no need to linger.

“Where’d she go, then?” Nanny asks in a tone that brooks no argument.

“It’ll go better for you if you just tell us, Dirk,” Granny assures.

“We’re just trying to get things sorted,” Magrat offers kindly.

“I’m sorry, ladies—” The grinding of Granny’s teeth is audible. “Er, that is, madams—” This time Granny fairly growls. “I mean to say—”

“You mean to shut up.” Granny advises.

“Don’t be bothering with all that guff,” Nanny tells Old Dirk. “Just tell us where she’s scarpered to and we’ll be out of your hair.”

“Look,” Old Dirk says, dropping the platitudes, “I don’t know, alright? She didn’t tell me where she was off to. Why would she?! People don’t make a habit of telling me where they’re going from here, do they? No! Stop by for a few newt’s eyes or a bit of—”

“Fine,” Granny says with finality, effectively cutting Old Dirk off before he can hit the stride for which he is well known around Lancre. “What was she doing here, then?”

“Hm?” Old Dirk makes an offhand noise as though he hasn’t heard.

Granny responds with a most ferocious arch of her brow.

“Now look,” Old Dirk says, desperate, “she didn’t tell me where she was going, and that’s the truth. And she didn’t buy anything neither. Couldn’t help her.”

“Help her with what?” Nanny demands. 

“Ah, I can’t tell you that, now can I?” Dirk says, straightening his spine and attempting to look more assertive and less harangued.

“You will, though,” Granny says, “or we’ll take our business elsewhere. Won’t we, Gytha? Magrat?”

Nanny nods without hesitation. Magrat looks regretful, but falls in line with solidarity.

Suddenly, Old Dirk finds himself with a hand to play, and responds with a dry look. “Have it your way.” He sounds more sure of himself now. “You know as well as I do the nearest Apothecary is past Creel Springs. Just going to nip over there on those cold winter days when you need a bit of dried toadstool, are you?”

“Fine,” Nanny says. “We’ll just be seeing you then, Dirk.”

“On the next cold winter day, I expect,” Granny finishes, her voice dripping with threatening promise as she slams the door.

* * *

Back on the high street, Granny grouses about the shameful lack of respect that people have for witches in Lancre these days.

“I always say, don’t I, that it’s no good when people lose their respect.” 

“He was just trying to protect Morag’s privacy,” Magrat says sympathetically.

“What’s she need a thing like that for?!” Granny sounds appalled.

“I’m her mother!” Nanny matches her tone.

“Well what’re we going to do now?” Magrat attempts a change of direction.

“Need another vase,” Nanny answers, looking around her, as though she’s likely to find one lying about on the high street of Lancre Town.

“Come on then, Gytha, Magrat,” Granny directs.

* * *

As Magret and Granny both live in cottages outside the capital, Granny leads the charge back to Tir Nani Ogg.

Although Granny’s been in the lead the whole way, she cedes that position to Nanny as they approach the townhouse. Nanny leads them up the side, past the house proper, and behind it, straight to the washing shed. The door bursts open, magicked so by Nanny’s palpable desire to lay hands on her wayward daughter.

Nanny grabs her old green crystal ball and wastes no time on frilly ceremonies or dramatic gestures. “Our Morag!” she shouts at it. Blurs begin their hazy swirl into images. “On the double!” Nanny clarifies. The ball obliges.

“Aha!” Nanny exclaims, and Magrat and Granny scrunch in closer. Both are taller than Nanny, so they loom over her, hunched downward to see over her wide shoulders.

“Where the disc is she now?” Nanny demands to the room at large. The bowl, this time, does not respond to the request. It just keeps up the image of Morag it’s showing for fear of it’s highly breakable glass life.

“Don’t know,” says Magrat. 

“Looks like she’s in a pub,” Nanny says. “Or a parlour. I don’t know it. My days, if the girl wanted a drink there’s plenty to go around at the hall.”

“Reckon that lot’ll have put a dent in even your deep reserves by the time we’re back,” Granny comments.

Nanny looks horrified at the prospect of a dry venue.

“Anyway, I know where she is,” Granny adds. “Won’t do to keep going on foot if we’re going to catch her up.” Granny sounds annoyed about that. “Gytha, get your broom.” She sounds definitive. “And the spare,” she says, decisiveness turning to resignation in an instant.

* * *

Esme Weatherwax both loathes and detests flying. So it is with glee that Nanny takes up the front spot on her best broom, pats the handle behind her, and tells Granny to climb on behind her and hold tight around her middle. Indeed, the moment of one-upmanship has a soothing effect on Nanny’s rage that not even Magrat’s utterly earnest platitudes and assurances have so far managed to accomplish. But then, Esme’s always been able to get to Nanny, for good or for ill, in furious arguments or at the zenith of camaraderie. And, she knows, she’s always been able to pay that back in kind. She just wouldn’t be herself if she let an opportunity of this magnitude to goad Esme Weatherwax go by without relishing it.

Magrat takes the spare broom and sits astride. Granny utters only the most cursory protests about being relegated to passenger status. It’s no secret that she can’t fly worth a damn. Let Gytha dodge the kestrels and account for the changes in air pressure. Besides, as Granny is the only one who knows where they’re going, she’ll get to enjoy bossing Gytha around, shouting directions in her ear over the rushing wind. Loudly. Shrilly. 

“Ready?” Nanny asks, looking to her side to check with Magrat, who nods. “Then off we go!” Nanny’s broom shoots into the air, and Granny slides back alarmingly, suddenly clutching for purchase around Nanny’s stomach and hanging on for dear life. Barks of Nanny’s laugher echo through the air. Nanny pulls her flask out of her knickers and takes a satisfied swig.

“Now’s not the time, Gytha,” Granny shrieks. “Eyes on the sky you fool!”

Nanny ignores her with extreme satisfaction.

They climb to a fair height where small local birds aren’t likely to be swooping around looking for seeds and worms, above treetops, where they can take a direct route.

Granny tightens her thighs like a vice around the Nanny’s hips and constricts the hold of her left arm around Nanny’s waist, as, with extreme reluctance, Granny points with her right hand. 

“Yonder! Round Brass Neck way!” she shrieks into Nanny’s ear.

Nanny turns the broom with more of a lurch than is strictly necessary. 

“Watch it, you drunk ninny!” Granny screams as Nanny brings the broom back in line.

Magrat swoops gracefully alongside them—the most natural on a broom of the coven—and follows as Granny nods to veer turnwise a bit.

Granny is relieved, and Nanny a bit disappointed, when the most exciting thing that happens during the flight is Granny releasing her boa constrictor-like hold on Nanny to shake her fist at some onlookers pointing upward, guffawing, and catcalling at the sight of Nanny’s voluminous drawers. Nanny always thinks that kind of carry on is a bit of a laugh, and wiggles her haunches as they fly past .

Magrat’s toes touch the ground gently before she dismounts and begins trying to straighten her hair and fix the floral arrangement she’s been sporting. 

“Best to give that up as a bad job, girl,” Granny advises, hoping off the stationary broom within a nanosecond of Nanny’s touch-down. She shoots the broom an aggrieved look as Nanny shoulders it.

“Where to, Esme?” Nanny asks, ready to keep moving.

“Not far, just that way.” Granny points up the road.

Magrat continues fussing with her hair as they make their way, despite Granny’s increasingly more pointed hmming and tutting.

“And just down here.” Granny directs them left very suddenly down a squalid alley. 

“Here, Esme?” Nanny says, doubtfully. “What’s our Morag doing somewhere like this, then? Unsavoury, like...”

Magrat says nothing, but her eyes drink in everything from the empty bottles to the overflowing bins excitedly. Poor thing has saved the world her share, but is still starved for life experience.

They trudge down the alley, dodging hissing stray cats and rubbish cascading out windows until it comes to an end. 

“What—”

“Where—”

But Nanny and Magrat both stop short when Granny reaches out and raps smartly on the dingey wooden wall that stands before them.

“Who’s it?” comes a muffled voice behind the wood. Nanny and Magrat startle, but Granny’s expecting it.

“I’m a humble old fabric merchant,” Granny answers. “Now let me in or I’ll take my goods elsewhere,” she warns with conviction.

“Don’t want no fabric here.” 

“Know that for a fact, do you?” Granny presses. 

“No merchants or peddlers, that’s what the Madam of the house says.”

“Said she didn’t want no new fabrics, did she? Said those words to you today?”

“Well…” The voice sounds less sure now.

“Thought not. Best let me in so she can decide for herself.”

“I’m not sure…”

“What if I leave and today or tomorrow or the next she tells you about how badly she needs some new damask?” Granny reasons.

“I suppose it couldn’t hurt…”

“Exactly right.” Granny sounds very agreeable.[6]

Some shuffling rings through the alleyway as the wall before them suddenly opens like a trap door from the bottom. The doorman stands underneath it, holding it up to let the witches pass beneath it.

“Three of you!” He says, alarmed. “But… And where’s your fabric?”

“Don’t carry it all around with me, do I boy?” Granny doesn’t address his first comment. She just tugs a damask scarf from around Magrat’s hips and waves it at him. “Just carry small samples and similar door to door.”

And before the doorkeeper can do more than call out protestations to their advancing backs, Granny leads Nanny and Magrat down the hall.

“Had to take my finest scarf did you, Granny?” But Magrat’s tone is pleased, as though she always knew that she was right to sport layers of clashing patterns.

“Told you it looked like a parlour, didn’t I?” Nanny says, taking in their surroundings as they come to the end of the hall and enter a large, warm-looking room. Nanny likes the look of things. The walls are draped with tasseled tapestries and oil lamps—proper oil lamps mind, what smell like oil and not some perfumed rubbish—and the tables are well varnished and polished to a high shine. Nanny, who likes to see a place well maintained, approves. Well, she approves of the décor. The ambience is another matter entirely. The place is altogether too quiet for her liking. Nanny doesn’t hold with quiet, solemn drinking. In fact, Nanny barely holds with drinking at all—tumultuous guzzling is really more her bag.

“Nice in here.” Magrat echoes Nanny’s thoughts. “Where are we, Granny?” 

“Bit quiet for a pub,” Nanny observes. 

“Never mind that. Have a seat, you two. Look Gytha, there’s the bar.” Granny points towards it. 

“I’m not here for a drink, Esme! I’m here to haul our Morag—"

“Don’t fuss yourself over that. You and Magrat take a seat. Have a drink. Stick together and don’t talk to anyone. I’m going to speak to the… proprietor and find Morag.” Granny marches away, letting her instructions trail behind her and take effect.

Nanny turns to Magrat, who sighs and wanders over to a table. The room is far from empty, but it’s as quiet as a monk’s cell. Most tables are occupied—all by parties of one. The women sitting at the tables are outnumbered by men. A couple of them are dwarves. And Nanny thinks a man doing his best to look small and unimposing might be half troll. They’ve all got the same air about them, though, each one sitting alone and keeping their eyes locked on the table before them. There’s a burly man behind the bar, but he stays put as Nanny takes a seat at one of the little tables for one and Magrat brings the chair over from the next table to join her.

“Not like no pub I ever quaffed in,” Nanny remarks.

“No,” Magrat agrees, despite herself eschewing quaffing and all other forms of alcohol consumption.

Nanny doesn’t like being kept waiting. Witches generally don’t. She swings her feet back and forth and wiggles her toes about in her boots, restless. Between the initial shock of Morag’s disappearance wearing off and her jollies winding Esme up on their flight, she’s more in control of her anger now, but she’s still filled with unspent energy from the adrenaline of the chase. When she gets her hands on that silly girl…

As though she can read Nanny’s thoughts, Magrat pipes up. “You’re not going to read Morag the riot act when we find her, are you? I’m sure she’s got a good reason—”

“For being next town over in a— a—” Nanny looks around, “in Brass Neck’s dullest pub? I’d rather watch my girls scour cauldrons than drink here.”

“It’s her wedding day,” Magrat reasons. “She wouldn’t have run off unless without cause, Nanny, I’m sure.” 

And Magrat truly believes that. Her heart is a romantic one. If _she_ had a groom waiting to say “I do,” she wouldn’t do a bunk over nothing. 

“What kind of reason do you suppose she can give that explains why she’s jilted her bloke on the day itself and left me without a roof?!”

The barman looks up at Nanny’s raised voice and shushes her.

“Oh, shush yourself.” Nanny’s about out of patience. 

After a few beats of silence, Magrat says softly, “What’s is like? To be wed?”

Nanny’s heart softens, moving another shade closer to its normal kindness at the earnest question. “A right hoot, if you’re doing it right,” she answers with a mischievous smile. “You haven’t heard from Verence, then?” It’s not a non-sequitur.

“Busy work, running a kingdom.”

“Course, yes. I expect so,” Nanny assures soothingly. “I’m sure once he’s got his sea legs, the lad’ll call round your cottage.”

“It’s been over a year.”

Nanny puts a comforting hand out to stop Magrat wringing her hands in her lap.

“And anyway, I don’t need a relationship to be fulfilled.”

“Course not.”

“I’ve a vocation.”

“You have.”

“Witchcraft is a calling.”

“Exactly right.” Nanny means to go on, to assure Magrat that whether or not Verence bucks up his ideas, Magrat’ll be just fine, to assure her that she’s the practical type, the kind who’ll land on her feet. But across the room Nanny sees a bloke swaggering his way down the stairs doing up his belt buckle with a wide-legged stance and a self-satisfied smirk Nanny would know anywhere. A woman in a dressing gown trails behind him and waves a few fingers at him in farewell before beckoning to one of the dwarves with a crooked finger.

* * *

While Nanny and Magrat wait in the parlour, Granny’s already made her way through some tacky beaded curtains at the top of the stairs into a long hallway peppered with doors on each side. Granny walks the length of the corridor, passing doors and pointedly ignoring the sounds of whining springs, vulgar groans, sharp smacks, and, most pointedly, a goat bleating. When she reaches the end of the hall she heads up another flight of stairs on the right and makes quick work of them. At the top there is a single door. Granny gives one cursory knock before heading in.

“Esme!” The voice that greets her does not sound put out by her presumptuous entry.

“Hello, Bronwyn,” Granny greets, accepting a hug stiffly. “How’s business.” 

“Booming, as always. You know people—could be a war, or a flood, or a famine, or a drought, or a plague, and people would still need a—”

“Aye, _that_ I well know, thank you. I’m familiar with the results.”

“Of course. I’d wager you delivered half the people downstairs.”

“At least,” Granny acknowledges.

“And you, Esme? How’s the witching?”

“Good as ever. Quieter than usual round Lancre since Verence’s coronation. Suits me fine.”

“Yes, it always did. What brings you here, if all’s calm?” Bronwyn, though her friendliness is genuine, manages to lie infinitely more smoothly than Old Dirk.

“Looking for a girl, name of Morag. Supposed to be wed this afternoon.”

“Don’t know any Morags.”

“Course you don’t. And I don’t know how to help young girls about nine months after accidents happen.”

“I see.”

“I’m sure you do.”

* * *

“So it’s _that_ kind of parlour, is it?”

“What kind?” Magrat wants to know.

“You know,” Nanny leans in to whisper in Magrat’s ear. 

Magrat considers Nanny’s explanation, perplexed. “But there are plenty of girls round the other pubs who’ll spend time with a lad for free.”

“Come on.” Nanny gets up and heads up the stairs, tracing the steps of the robed woman and the dwarf. Magrat follows, still confused, but equally excited and curious.

Nanny is stood among the beaded curtains, looking down the hall, Magrat just a step below while Nanny’s body blocks her way. 

“Can you see Granny?” Magrat asks.

“Nothing for it,” Nanny answers. “We’ll have to find her.” Perhaps because no roofs hang in the balance, Nanny’s spirits are perked up at the prospect of this particular hunt. She starts down the hall when a rather sharp sound rings out—the cracking of a whip? Without so much as a knock, Nanny throws open the first door she reaches. 

“I’ve still got ten minutes!” a man calls out, indignant. But his cry is a bit muffled, as he’s facing the floor, bent forward, hands tied around his ankles.

The woman standing next to him with a riding crop gives Nanny a questioning look.

“Wrong room,” Nanny says, sounding completely unapologetic. “You shouldn’t lock your knees, lad. Bad for the joints, bend them, just a bit, that’s a boy.”

Nanny closes the door and moves on. “Not in there.”

Magrat’s eyes are nearly bulging out of her skull. “What—”

“Not now, love.” Nanny moves on to the door across the hall. The smell… it’s like a barnyard, only worse—it’s like Greebo on a hot day—hits her before anything else and she slams the door shut. “Nor in here neither.”

The next door Nanny tries reveals a woman inspecting a man’s pelvis closely. Magrat can’t see her, as the lad is facing away from them. “Bladder trouble?” Magrat asks the room at large. “I might have some Five-Leaf False Mandrake here somewhere.” She moves to open her bag.

“Not needed, dear,” Nanny says, pushing Magrat further down the hall. “You’ll get a cramp, dear, if you keep that up. Best to split the work between your hands and jaw.”

Nanny and Magrat continue down the hallway, leaving in their wake a trail of women considering their techniques and men not best pleased about being disturbed. Well, except for one fellow who’d asked if they were there to watch. He sounded proper chuffed at the prospect. Granny had grabbed Magrat by the shoulders and steered her away even as she was calling out, “Watch what?”

* * *

In the office at the end of the hall, Granny and Bronwyn stare at one another for a moment before Bronwyn sighs. “I’m not in the business of being a blabbermouth, you know.”

“Course not.”

Granny might have said more if Nanny and Magrat hadn’t stumbled into the office just then.

“There you are, Esme!”

Bronwyn smirked at Granny. “These are with you, I take it.”

“That they are,” Granny affirms. “Thought I told you both to wait downstairs,” she snaps.

“And since when do we follow your orders?”

“Since I’m that one that—” 

“Who’s your friend, Granny?” Magrat redirects attention in the room to Bronwyn.

“This is Bronwyn. Old friend of mine.”

“Pleased to meet you…”

“Magrat Garlick,” Magrat introduces herself. “And Nanny Ogg.”

“It’s Nanny’s daughter, Morag, what’s missing, you see.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” Bronwyn sounds more calculated that sympathetic. “But I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“Sure about that, are you?” Granny asks.

“Afraid I am, Esme.” Bronwyn doesn’t sound afraid.

“Why’re we faffing about here, then, Esme? Haven’t seen hide nor hair of our Morag since we arrived. Not that I’d expect to find her here…”

“Doesn’t she like sheep, Nanny?” 

The other three women snort. Magrat’s question is excruciatingly genuine.

“Let’s go then,” Nanny beckons. “We’ll have to find another way—”

“Shut up, Gytha.” Granny says.

Granny looks back at Bronwyn. She looks her dead in the eye. She hadn’t really expected to get out of this without a hint of magic, of course. Nothing short of witchcraft would loosen Bronwyn’s tongue. There’s a reason her business is so successful.

“I’m going to feel you something now, Bronwyn.”

The sentence doesn’t make much sense, but in an instant Bronwyn knows what it means, because suddenly she’s filled with feelings not her own. And yet they’re filling her up. Granny is feeling her something—projecting her feelings about this woman, this Nanny Ogg. Bronwyn can feel a mess of conflicted feelings and the thoughts that accompany them. There are no images. Instead she’s filled with a sense of superiority mixed with a potent amount of care and concern. Waves of exasperation and irritation confront those of deepest fondness and admiration for primacy in Bronwyn’s heart. And just like that, it’s over. Bronwyn puts a steadying hand on the desk in front of her.

“I see.”

“No, you don’t. You feel.” Granny corrects, smug that her spell has worked correctly, while simultaneously annoyed that she’s shared her feelings with someone else. Sharing grievances, she’s comfortable with. This is quite another story, and if she hadn’t trusted Bronwyn’s trademark silence, she wouldn’t have done it. 

If it hadn’t been for a fellow witch—for Gytha—she wouldn’t have done it.

“Yes, well—”

Suddenly the door bursts open again, and Magrat and Nanny are pushed bodily into Granny by an onslaught of enraged brothel-goers. 

“Some old biddies burst in!” a man’s voice calls out.

“Old!” Magrat sounds disgruntled.

“Biddies!” Nanny sounds more amused than anything.

“We were interrupted!” comes another complaint, this one from a man standing starkers with only his hands to provide modesty. “In flagrante!"

“They didn’t even stay to watch!” whines a particularly lecherous-sounding patron.

Bronwyn levels a glare of supreme blame upon Granny. Granny doesn’t look contrite, just frowns more deeply at her friend.

“Seems I’ve got some things to attend to here, Esme. You might do well to head down the main drag until you find a vendor’s stall.”

“Oh?” Granny’s genuinely surprised. “Any vendor in particular?”

Bronwyn doesn’t answer. Instead, she points to the door. She’s already divulged more than she should, or than she wants to. “Sorry I can’t offer you a drink and a game of Cripple Mr Onion, but some _old biddies_ seem to have hacked off my guests.”

“Another time,” Granny calls over her shoulder as she navigates the sea of nude bodies, looking studiously before her so as not to take in a single detail. “We need to see a vendor about a girl.”

* * *

Before they can fully clear the wooden trap door they’d entered, Nanny demands an explanation. 

“What’d you show her back there, Esme?”

“Didn’t show her nothing. Like I said, I felt her something. It’s similar. Bit different.”

“Doesn’t sound like headology.” Margrat remarks. “More like heartology, or—"

“I’d also like to know,” Nanny says over Magrat, “how you came to know about this bawdy house in the first place.”

“Know the proprietor.” Granny says flatly. “Back out the alley and down the way, I believe,” instructs Granny, clearly intent to leave the subject behind. It doesn’t take a soothsayer to figure out where this line of conversation is going. And, in any case, sometimes sooths come to Granny for saying quite without her invitation. She’s never held with seeing the future. The present is quite enough. And in this present, indeed, for as many presents as she can remember, she’s been a master, for better or for worse, of headology. Gytha loves to point out Granny’s apparent frigidity—her iciness, her lifelong companionlessness. And Esme has just led Gytha into a den of… companionability. It only takes introductory level headology to work out that Gytha will hardly be eager to let this go. Magrat could work it out.

“How’d someone like you,” Nanny repeats, volume rising as they exit the alley, leaving the rubbish and the who-knows-what-else behind, “whose knickers are well known to be colder than the ice floes in Whale Bay, come to know the ‘proprietor,’” Nanny pumps the word full of false esteem, “of a bawdy house? Thought you didn’t hold with any of that, Esme. Though you were quite above,” Nanny makes a gesture that looks to Magrat like she’s miming threading a needle repeatedly. “Never mind glad-handing with people in the _business_.”

“Don’t know what you mean,” Granny returned, “been glad-handing with you for years.”

“What’s a body house?” Magrat asks. Generally, Magrat considers it her duty to keep the peace between her would-be mentors. But she’s also got a hunger for knowledge combined with the legacy of a sheltered upbringing.

“One of _them_ places,” Nanny advises. “You were just in one, girl! Young lads, looking for a bit of company, you know? Of the naked variety.”

“Sounds a bit chilly to me.” Magrat considers. 

“Speaking of,” Nanny adds, reaching into her knickers for her flask, “I could use with a little warming up.” She takes a long draught.

“It’s midsummer.” Granny sounds as dry as a lizard. Fortunately, she has a consummate ability to insult Nanny’s carousing while staying on task. “Back to the high street, then.” Granny leads them out of the dingey alley and up the high street of Brass Neck, eyes scanning both sides of the road like a hawk. As they get further away from the alley, the street gets more and more crowded with merchants of every description. A few look like approaching Magrat or Nanny as potential customers, but Granny’s air of “we’re not here to muck about,” acts like a barrier to all high-pressure sales pitches as they walk. 

Of course, Magrat and Nanny as are close as it gets to immune to Granny’s natural air, so there’s nothing stopping Magrat from cooing over skirts from Klatch that sparkle with gold threads woven in, or Nanny laughing over hideously tacky tchotchkes from Far Uberwald and demanding of the other two, “Aren’t they funny?” with a point of her finger.

The sum total of all this is that Granny has to increase her output of foreboding in order to keep the hopeful-eyed merchants at bay. She’s doing her level best when someone, apparently idiot enough not to notice, or else not to care about Granny’s manner, calls out to Magrat from a few stalls down.

“Wotcher, love. Got something here that will slick that hair like a dream—straight elegant sheets, bouncy ringlets. Whatever you like, CMOTD’s Frizz-Be-Gone tonic’ll give you manageable tresses in one use! And only thruppence! Cutting my own throat, I am, at that price.”

Granny has a sinking feeling she’s found their quarry. A suspicion that is confirmed when Morag steps out from the other side of the charlatan’s stall holding two bottles—one in each hand—and asks the swindler, “Which one of these has the least smell?”

“How often do you need to use it?” Magrat asks at the same time, looking desperately at the decanter of tonic. “I’ve only got tuppence on me…” 

“Cutting my own throat, would be, at tuppence. Practically giving it away. And the almond oil, love, I’d say,” he appends, turning his head from Magrat to Morag.

“Our Morag!” Nanny cries, reaching out to grab her daughter by the ear.

“Mum!” Morag shrieks, shocked, dropping the bottles she’s holding.

“You’ll be paying for those, of course—” the swindler begins.

“Pft. Not worth the glass they’ve tarnished, your wares.” Granny dismisses. 

“Now come on, missus, those are quality goods smashed all over the street. How’m I supposed to sell them now? Gotta earn my living, you know. And here’s me, cutting my own throat already to offer the public—”

As the cheat launches into his spiel, Nanny begins haranguing Morag about what she thinks she’s playing at, risking her poor mother’s dear roof, leaving all the guests behind to drink her out of her own merriment so that she and Granny and Magrat can fly across Hell’s Half Acre looking for her sorry arse.

Morag tries to placate her mother all the while, apologising, but offering no explanation.

Magrat just looks at the hair “tonic” the idiot is still holding with longing. She knows that appearances aren’t everything, of course. Granny is constantly praising Magrat’s squint and lamenting her own lack of warts. In fact, appearances are perhaps the only topic on which Granny and Bony Swallow agree—he’s always stressing the importance of loving one’s body as-is. And Magrat’s been telling herself how deeply she approves of herself in the mirror 100 times a day for months and months… but she still finds herself longing for gleaming, smooth locks. Glamours won’t hold on a witch—something about magic just won’t stick when the caster and the target are the same. But this tonic… she didn’t brew it, after all… 

“Shut up,” Granny commands. And they all do. “And I’m no one’s missus,” she adds for the benefit of the bottle-wielding buffoon. “Gytha, let go of Morag’s ear before you do her GBH. Still got time to rectify this.” 

Nanny does not release her daughter, but does ease up on the tugging. 

Granny takes Magrat by the arm and moves to leave the vendor, his stall, and the odiferous fumes emanating from the twin puddles of broken glass and oil on the street. 

“Done you girls a favour,” Granny tells Magrat and Morag as she frog marches the lot of them back up the way, away from the clusters of noisy bodies, “both them oils stink worse than a privy. If there’s an ounce of almond in that whole bottle I—”

“What’re you calling stinking, you old bat? I may be called Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, but even I don’t just give my products away.”

“Well, that’s fine then,” says Nanny in a disarmingly sensible voice. “As we’re not taking any.”

“Some of the finest products from Ankh-Morpork here, and you breaking them and slandering—” 

“Why don’t you sell them in Ankh-Morpork then? Prices in the Ramtops competing with the big cities these days, are they? If you’re not up here hiding away while some monkey-business you caused blows over, I’ll eat me hat.”[7]

Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, on the business end of his first encounter with Granny Weatherwax, could not have known the severity of the wager. He laid hands on Granny, seizing her arm before she can move further away.

“I wouldn’t lay hands on a witch if I were you, lad,” Nanny advises.

“And I ain’t letting you out of my sight until I get my thruppence for each broken bottle!”

“Is that so?” Granny leans in, bringing her face within inches of Dibbler’s.

“It is,” he says, like the worst of fools.

Granny releases her hold on Magrat in order to remove Dibbler’s hand from her arm. She does so with such force that he staggers backward, knocking into the display of hair odoriser he’d tried to pawn off on Magrat and breaking at least a dozen more bottles in the process. 

Dibble looks anguished at the detritus around him. The witches and Morag cover their noses and do their best to mouth-breathe. “That’s— that’s—” Dibbler screams at Granny, pointing at the shards of glass and oil. He tries to count the number of shattered bottles, but they’ve broken into such tiny pieces, it’s impossible to tell how many they were before they became a sharp and smelly road hazard. After a moment he settles on, “You’re covering that damage!”

“Am I, indeed?” Granny leans into Dibbler once again, now so close that her pointed nose is end to end with his.

“Perhaps we could give him a few pence, Granny,” Magrat tries.

“I’d think carefully how you answer that, lad,” Nanny councils at the same time.

“Yes, you are! Full price for every last—”

Granny doesn’t move, but a series of bottles explode, one by one, behind Dibbler, showering him in a reeking blend of oils and tonics and who knows what muck.

Dibbler loses it. He lunges at Granny, who doesn’t flinch. Behind her, Nanny pulls her flask from her knickers, takes a glug, and dives into the fray.

 

[4] Many gods are worshipped across the disc, each with their own followers and sites and Orders. But as Nanny has met a variety of transcendent beings and deities in the course of her work, she doesn’t hold with worshipping them, and thus all the weddings in her family have been carried out in the local wedding hall by the local representative of the Bureaucrats’ and Paperwork Enthusiasts’ Guild.

[5] It is another constant of the multiverse that every wedding there will be at least desperate attention seekers. 

[6] She typically does, when someone comes around to her way of thinking.

[7] Granny’s assumption was, of course, dead on. Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibber was, in fact, lying low until one of Ankh-Morpork’s more dangerous members of the Assassin’s Guild grew his hair, eyebrows, lashes, and mustache back.


	3. ACT III: A Few Revelations

It really was bad luck for Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler that Granny and Nanny had both been spoiling for someplace to expend the unwelcome, edgy feeling they’d both been carrying around while Morag was missing.

Their band, as Granny leads the way away from the utter shambles that now comprises Dibbler’s former stall, is looking a bit worse for the wear. Of course, with Magrat it’s hard to tell, because of the natural inclination of her hair and her preferences for clothes that suggest they’ve been candidly draped over her instead of agonisingly put in place. Likewise, Nanny’s clothes are sliding off her shoulders and riding down her hips at the best of times. Morag, however, is sporting a plait that now more closely resembles a rat king and a ripped wedding gown with a number of smelly oil stains. Granny, by some magic all her own, still has all her clothes in order. Her hat isn’t even crooked.

When they make it back to the quieter spot where Nanny and Magrat had landed in the first place, Nanny happily returns to berating Morag.

“Now my girl, I’ll be wanting a damn fine explanation for all this.”

“Not now, Gytha.” Granny gestures to the broom that’s still swung over Nanny’s shoulder. “About time we got this one,” she thumbs towards Morag, “where she belongs. We can’t’ve been gone that long. I reckon that young… wossname, you know… him what’s at the hall… I reckon he’ll be waiting, merrier than ever with a crowd to match.”

Nanny nods at the possibility. “You’d just better hope he is, Morag.” She swings the broom down, throws one thick thigh over it, and gestures to her daughter to follow suit. 

Magrat gets astride her own and looks at Granny.

“Think it’s best I ride with Nanny Ogg again,” Granny suggests. “Wouldn’t want any… er… accidents, now would we? If things get a bit heated in the air.”

Morag practically jumps upon Magrat’s broom in her eagerness to put as much distance as possible between herself and her mother.

The flight back to the hall passes with Nanny dropping a few feet every so often just to get a rise out of Granny. She peppers the action with “sips” from her flask. Esme needn’t know it’s been empty since they left Dibbler’s.

While Granny responds to Nanny’s flying with a steady stream of remonstrances for every aspect of Nanny’s lifestyle and comportment that have ever offended her, Magrat is likewise treated to a litany, albeit one of dreadful woe, as Morag frets over what her mother will do when they land.

And there _is_ a question, Magrat thinks. Nanny’s mood has been up and down since news of Morag’s disappearance first reached them. Magrat has certainly heard many of Nanny’s children speak with titillated dread about the times Nanny’s gone off on one, so she knows it’s possible for Nanny to lose her temper good and proper. But up until now it’s always seemed funny to Magrat, something theoretical, but never actually probable.

“I’m in for it now, miss, you mark my words,” Morag is saying into her ear.

Magrat firms up her grip and turns her head to the side without changing direction so that Morag can hear her. “Why’d you do it then? Your brothers and sisters are always going on at The Goat and Bush about Nanny’s temper.”

Morag doesn’t answer immediately. “Don’t know. It was stupid I guess, to think I could just take care of it, today of all days…”

“Take care of what?” Magrat pushes.

“It, you know?”

Magrat shakes her head and Morag has to spit out some of her hair. 

“ _It_ ,” Morag infuses the word with meaning that is utterly lost on Magrat. “It ain’t right between me and Garrick, like.”

“Why on earth did you agree to marry him, then?” Magrat is baffled. Deep down, she supposes, she’d never let go of the idea that there was something romantic behind Morag’s flight. Some grand gesture, some final thing or act without which the deed could not be done.

“Didn’t know. I know it’s a bit old fashioned, but we didn’t get up to nothing until we was engaged, you know? Call it being one of a horde, but I don’t fancy children.”

“Oh,” Magrat says, still confused. She knows plenty about children: she’s delivered plenty in Goody Whimper’s (may she rest in peace) neck of the woods, and she still sees to all the women Goody Whimper (may she rest in peace) had taken care of before she died. But Magrat’s lost here. She feels like she’s missing some fundamental piece of a puzzle without which the whole image can never possibly be seen for what it is. It’s frustrating. “And Garrick’s dead set on children, then?” Magrat doesn’t know what else to ask. She knows plenty of spinsters, like Granny, but she’d always assumed that marrying women wanted babies and the rest of it. She’s always thought that the husband and the romance and the children were the point. Is it possible that Granny’s been right all this time about marriage—about its nature as little more than a practical arrangement? The thought chills Magrat worse than the air rushing past her on her broom.

“I haven’t a clue about that, but he’s dead set on the rest of it, and no mistake. But it just won’t _go_. I’ve tried, but it’s like ice shop at the Hub down there when we’re alone.”

“Hm?” Magrat has moved from puzzled to utterly at sea.

“Closed for business.” Morag elaborates.

“Why didn’t you call it off, then?” Magrat does, at least, understand that Morag expected _something_ to shift when she accepted Garrick’s proposal.

“Cowardice, I suppose, miss.” Morag sounds utterly, completely, impossibly glum. “Her nibs was so keen on it, and I just didn’t know what to say.”

“Are you going to go through with it when we land?”

Magrat hears only the wind in her ears as a response. 

Once they land Granny finishes a tangent she’s clearly been on for some time by announcing that if witches were meant to fly they’d been born with wings (at which Nanny points out that Granny, who’s a dab hand at borrowing, frequently has wings). Nanny quickly changes targets, however. “Right my girl, now get in that hall and down that aisle. You look a mess, but there’s nothing can be done about that now. We’re witches, not fairy godmothers.”

“I’d like to be a fairy godmother,” Magrat muses. “Nice it was, watching over Tom John, bestowing a gift…”

The others ignore her.

“By now the guests won’t notice anyway.” Granny sounds matter of fact. “Doubt they’d have been sober enough to notice if Morag had arrived shoeless in a pumpkin wearing nothing but rags even if she’d been on time.” The sentiment, though certainly a comment upon what Granny thinks of her reprobate neighbours, is meant, in its way, to console Morag, to get her where she’s due to be and get this whole sorry business wrapped up.

Morag’s face looks resigned and she sighs. 

Magrat can’t bear it.

“She can’t marry him.”

“And why not?!” Nanny demands, rounding on Magrat.

“She don’t love him.” 

The starry-eyed pronouncement is too much for Granny, who rolls her eyes in a manner that looks both well practiced and painful, and for Nanny as well, who scoffs. “Don’t love him, eh? And what’s a thing like that matter? You been putting ideas in her head, Magrat? He’s a strapping fellow with a good trade.” This last is directed at Morag. “You can’t find better than that. I reckon you’re getting a bit big for your breeches, girl.”

With Magrat’s revelation, things are out in the open; the River Ankh has been crossed, and Morag knows she can implore her mother to understand, or she can walk into the hall and down the aisle and past her sauced guests and say yes to Garrick and embark on a truly pitiful life she doesn’t want.  
“It’s no good, mum. I don’t want him. I’m as dry as Gammer Beavis’s Hogwatch cake down there when he tries it on with me.[8] I went to Old Dirk’s, cause it’s nearby the wedding hall, you know. Asked him what he might have to make things feel normal. He told me he didn’t trade in _those_ kinds of simples. So I went to Bronwyn’s—heard some fellas mention it in The Goat and Bush a few times. Paid for a quarter hour with one of the girls and asked her what to do. She sent me down for oil—said to slick myself up and Bob’s your uncle.”

Nanny looked agog. Granny looked thoroughly vindicated.

“Haven’t I _always_ told you, Gytha. Some people just ain’t the marrying kind.”

“Have—” Nanny stutters, at a loss to understand how anyone could fail to revel in the kinds of pleasures that a lover can bring. “Have,” she tries again, “you really given it a proper go, though? Dead fun if you just tell the lad what to do.”

“I’ve tried, Mum. I think— I think I don’t want no lad.” Morag looks her mother in the eye, defiant now.

Her words strike Granny oddly. She’s always considered herself firmly outside the marrying cohort because, as a witch, she’s dedicated to her craft. And as an _serious, respectable_ witch, she’s supposed to be austere, unattached, alone. Independent. That’s always how she’s thought about it. If she’s not making her own go of it, doing things her way, how’s anyone to know she’s a witch in the first place? And if no one knows she’s a witch, what the disc’s the point of being one at all? 

It’s never occurred to her that there might be more than two choices: marry a man or go it alone—not really, not consciously, and certainly not in any way she can’t ignore by going round Nanny’s and distracting herself by having a pry into what local goings on they _ain’t_ going to meddle in. 

But Morag’s words hold something more than just themselves. Her sentiment is unfinished, refers to something larger. She don’t want no lad, but perhaps she does want… something else. Someone else.

“Don’t you say aught, Esme Weatherwax.” Nanny wags her finger at Granny preemptively. “Morag,” Nanny’s voice is tempered now, softer, questioning, “you don’t want to spend your life alone do you? Without companionship?”

“I don’t know about alone,” Morag answers. “But you don’t have to be married to have companionship. Dad’s been dead ages years, and you’re hardly alone. You’ve got us lot. And Granny before that even.”

Magrat, who’s cherished notions about romance have been draining sadly away all day, suddenly recalls Granny’s bit of heartology back in Bronwyn’s parlour, and latches onto this line of thought like a lifeline. “Well, that’s true enough,” she says, considering. “We’re all companions in this coven, but you two have a history together I just can’t share with witches of your generation.” She sounds convicted, admiring, but also wistful, nostalgic for a kind of human connection she’s never known. No matter how much she reads about her most important relationship being with herself, she can’t deny that she would sorely love, just once, to be the most important person to someone, just to see how it feels.

Granny absolutely hates feeling rattled, so she’s not in the best of moods as it is when Nanny insists that that’s hardly the same as a husband.

“Chopped frog liver, am I?” Granny says, mutinously. 

“No, but you ain’t no husband neither— I mean, wife— I mean… Oh, you know what I mean.” 

“Looking for a new… one of them things, are you?” Granny asks.

“Hardly need one, you’re as needy and demanding as one and no mistake.”

Granny has always held that things that look like things sometimes seem even more like things than things themselves. But for the first time she wonders, could that be true of being, not just looking? After enough time, or with the right desire, could a thing that looks like a thing actually become that thing, if one took it for the thing itself in the first place—if one _wanted_ it to be?

Magrat is empathetic enough to feel some kind of energy resonating between Granny and Nanny, and tactful enough not to comment on it. But she can’t help but feel, not really that her faith in romance has been restored, but that perhaps it’s been replaced with an optimism that there’s more than one way to be happy.

“Come on.” Morag finally breaks the silence. “Let’s get this jilting over with.”

 

[8] The cake in question is well appreciated by Lancrastrians who receive it as an annual gift, for though it is plainly inedible, in its whole form it makes a fearsome projectile, and if crumbled into powder, it is indeed dry enough to sop up large spills.


	4. Epilogue

Garrick, it must be said, takes it standing up. Actually, in this particular case, that idiom is not apt, as he’s on his arse drunk, pinching a bleeding nose, with a friendly arm around the perpetrator when he asks Morag, “You made it, did you?” And passes out.

The following weeks are as quiet as weeks ever are around Tir Nani Ogg. Nanny babysits, bosses her squadrons of daughters-in-law around, and oversees DIY projects at the hands of her sons-in-law, but something of her usual gusto is lacking. She loves her house, and seeing it gussied up, enjoying it, putting her energy into it, has always been an unflappable source of joy for her. She has always, always enjoyed making a home (doubly so if it’s others who are doing the making, and just to her liking). But since the wedding-cum-revelation, she’s been hopelessly distracted. She can’t stop thinking about what Morag and Magrat—the pair of goofs—had said about companionship. She can’t get a break from thinking about Esme, can’t help mulling over how exactly she and Esme fit into each other’s lives. And she can’t, not at any waking moment, cease turning Esme’s unusual words over and over in her mind: _Looking for a new… one of them things, are you?_

If she were, what would Nanny be looking for, exactly? She’s always had a bit of a type: headstrong, self-possessed, someone who can give her a run for her money…

* * *

In her own cottage, Granny is similarly preoccupied. Usually she’d be spending her days making her rounds—milking goats and downing cups of tea-ey sugar in hopes of coaxing some spots onto her unblemished skin and dropping in on the nursing mothers around Bad Ass, making sure their elder children are minding them while they’re convalescing and giving the littlest sprogs their attention, scowling their husbands into exemplary behaviour. But she, like Gytha, is merely going through the motions. What’s worse, she knows it. Headology is her, well, her brainchild, and she doesn’t need to do any magical peeping to know that Gytha will be spending just as much time _considering_ things as she is herself. 

_You ain’t no husband neither— I mean, wife— I mean… Oh, you know what I mean._

Granny’s sure that neither she nor Gytha knew what was meant by that statement when it was made. But she’s equally certain that Gytha’s worked it out just like she has. Gytha’s a lush, not an imbecile. No, even drunk, Gytha’s remarkably astute, always quick on the uptake, and smart enough to play like she isn’t when it suits her…

* * *

They meet, as they have always done, in the middle. Well, previously “the middle” had largely consisted of one of them eventually going along grudgingly with the other’s plan out of desperation or expediency in dire magical straits. On this occasion, however, “the middle” comprised a poorly lit dirt land, the midway point, on foot, between Lancre Town and Bad Ass.

“Coming to talk my ear off about Lottie and Garrick, are you?” Granny had heard tell from Gordo Smith that Gytha, as she had always been wont to do, smoothed over the jilting at the alter with Garrick over a few drinks (and with a bit of headology of her own, sociable sort, Granny has no doubt) after he came to. 

Nanny beams. “Offered him a bit of the hair of the dog the morning after, you know. With Lottie coming round marrying age soon, and being all a flutter over him as it was while he was courting Morag, it was simple enough.”

“Marriage don’t solve everything, you know.”

“Well, I know it won’t work for us,” Nanny chuckles. She’s acting completely like her normal, good spirited, tipsy self. Granny is, likewise, projecting as much composure as ever.

“No. I can’t hold with fifty many people running roughshod all over the place.”

“They never! My lot are very obedient, as you well know, Esme.”

“In any case, I’ll not be moving into Tir Nani Ogg. The roof on that place is a disgrace.”

“Well, I’m hardly moving into your unkempt hovel,” Nanny counters.

“Who invited you too?”

“So we’re agreed.”

“Entirely.”

Thing is, Nanny thinks, when you’ve been companions with someone long as she has with Esme, you know where you stand with one another. At least, she’d thought she had done. Things have been a bit wobbly on that score lately, but she _is_ sure that her implacable best friend is right in the middle of shifting into something else. Or, rather, something more. It’s a breed of magic all its own. Wild, uncontrollable, undirectable. It makes what it will. Nanny, who prides herself on a laissez-faire attitude in matters not concerning her creature comforts, is excited by it. She doesn’t know how long it’s been since magic excited her, since it showed her something she hadn’t known was there before.

“You know how it all works, of course.” Nanny says, reverse-headologying Granny. As if the woman would ever admit there was anything about which she’s worse than clueless.

“Course I do.” Granny sounds defiant.

“You’re as green as I am about what two old bats get up too between the sheets, Esme. But I know what I like, and we can start from there.”

“Oh we can, can we?” It’s a challenge. 

Nanny presses her plump lips to Granny’s thin ones and meets it, as it were, head on. 

The warmth that floods Granny’s chest, and guts, and… places (quite without her permission) is accompanied by a faint tickling on her upper lip from Nanny’s whiskers. Granny doesn’t give Gytha the satisfaction of saying so, but privately thinks that _that_ is what a witch’s kiss should feel like.

Afterwards, Granny and Nanny—Esme and Gytha—continue to challenge one another, which is a polite way of saying hack each other off with aplomb between stints of setting the headboard to knocking. Esme complains that Gytha is as insatiable as she always suspected. Gytha parries every time that it’s Esme, with her knickers finally thawed out, who’s set herself to making up for lost time by interrupting Nanny’s afternoons and scandalising her children-in-law.

As has often been the case in the Ramtops over the decades, they are both right.


End file.
